Wednesday, 26 December 1883

Sculpture. I am very tired, having played the orator throughout my work and exhausting myself in eloquence before Claire and Irma — for it is she who poses, I found no one better. If I become famous and this diary is read, and if people judge a family by what I say of it, or call these people imbeciles as I name them, I shall be vexed. One says many things oneself that one does not wish to hear said by others. And yet they are very tiresome imbeciles. I had to make scenes to prevent them from sending Claire, for her Christmas, an ermine fur in a white satin box. That is colossal, you must admit. And yet in other circumstances Maman and my aunt are not more extraordinary than the rest of humanity. These ladies say: Marie by force of mind is foolish — she is too grand and too loyal; we are like everyone else; let us not tell her we are making such a gift or such an approach — she will be pleased enough and content herself. They have said it and say it to each other often. I am grand and loyal if you like, but I am also very reasonable and put neither grandeur nor loyalty into things that have no need of them. These ladies are also passively fussy — they will do the very same thing that irritates me a hundred times despite a hundred observations, and all with an air of tranquillity, as though I had said nothing. Well — they affect to fear me and treat me as an invalid... Well, well, well — sometimes they ask my opinion on everything, do not follow it, irritate me, aggravate me, commit foolishnesses, acknowledge them, lie, begin again, lie again; acknowledge my genius, hide from me to do as they please... They are unconscious. O Slavic race — there you are indeed. Something indefinable is wanting in this maddening race. The Slavs partake of all nationalities, they have every aptitude — but how shall I put it — they have them approximately, and in a vague, maddening way. [Words blackened: people endowed with coarse refinements] — stupid and witty, one truly cannot define them — they are like my family, they are unbalanced, and yet... Well, they displease me and irritate me. And I? I — it is well understood — am another matter. There are enough people besides me to speak ill of me. It is evident that I believe myself possessed of every merit. How then to explain the frequent dissatisfactions I cause myself? I explain them by telling you that I have every merit but do not know how to use it. It is like my talent — Michelangelo, Bastien, Bojidar — I combine them all, but it has not yet broken through. Go on, laugh — "You, my little one, are encroaching on others' domain."